You Can Walk On The Ocean Floor & Explore Mysterious Caves At This Seaside Village In Canada

Get ready to release your inner mermaid!

​A person walks on the ocean floor in St. Martins, New Brunswick. Right: Sea caves along the Bay of Fundy.

A person walks on the ocean floor in St. Martins, New Brunswick. Right: Sea caves along the Bay of Fundy.

Writer

If you want to live your best mermaid life, you can visit a small town in Canada where you can explore sea caves and take a walk along the ocean floor.

Located on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, St. Martins, New Brunswick, is a charming seaside village where you can take advantage of the famously drastic tides of the bay.

The tides of the Bay of Fundy rise and fall every 6 hours and 13 minutes, with the difference between low tide and high tide ranging up to 38 feet.

The amount of water that flows in and out of the bay in one day is said to be equal to all of the water pumped into all of the oceans by all of the rivers on earth.

This means that when the tide is low, hikers can literally walk along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean and look for newly exposed treasures like sea glass, shells, fossils and semi-precious stones.

You'll likely also come across small crabs, dog whelk sea snails, periwinkles and barnacles while you explore.

While the tide is low, you can also venture out to sandstone sea caves carved by years of water erosion, which you can only access by boat when the tide is high.

Just be sure to keep an eye on the time — the tide moves quickly and can rush back at over 10 metres per minute!

It's also recommended that you wear rubber boots or aqua socks to walk along the ocean floor, as it can get pretty muddy.

The St. Martins sea caves are just over an hour away from Fundy National Park, where you can hike along over 100 kilometres of trails or go on a kayak tour in the nearby village of Alma.

St. Martins Sea Caves

Price: Free

Address: 82 Big Salmon River Rd., Bay View, NB

Why You Need To Go: You can walk along the sea floor and venture out to sea caves created by the Bay of Fundy tides in New Brunswick.

When the tide is low, the caves are empty and just waiting to be explored. But don't stay for too long ⁠— the tide fills the caves with water when it comes back in!

Website

Before you get going, check out our Responsible Travel Guide so you can be informed, be safe, be smart, and most of all, be respectful on your adventure.

  • Contributing Writer

    Katherine Caspersz (she/her) is a contributing writer for Narcity Media, covering travel, things to do and more. She has written for various news sites and magazines, including Yahoo Canada and The National Post, and worked as an editor for the Toronto Star and The Globe and Mail. She loves shopping, travel and all things spooky.

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